Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Are you up for an underworld treasure hunt? I’m not talking about trolling for spiritual wisdom while watching “The Sopranos.” I don’t mean seeking out dating tips in horror films. I urge you to scare up some riches in the soul’s natural habitat, also known as eternity, the collective unconscious and…
Fear and onions
There is something terribly wrong here. It’s not something that I can wrap words around or poke at with poetic insights or adorn with rhetorical ribbon. It’s under the skin, like the first few hours of influenza, a nervous, sweaty panic. Something is going to happen here. It’s going on behind my back and in…
DEQ’s Deep Throat
An anonymous Department of Environmental Quality employee lambastes recent actions by Gov. John Engler and DEQ Director Russ Harding.
Letters to the Editor
Starting at the top Jeremy Voas’ “Screed” on Dave Bonior made it crystal clear why the Metro Times has gotten so good in the past few months ("Davud vs. Goliath redux," Metro Times, Oct. 16-22). Besides being thoughtfully considered and closely argued, it was quite simply a great piece of writing stylistically. I’ve heard so…
Live dancing girls!
This is the era of in-your-face instant gratification. America has no patience for anticipation — we want it now and we want it five minutes ago. Film and TV have become so blatantly graphic, so caught up in gory gross-outs and million-dollar special effects that Hitchcock’s artful suspense only elicits a dull yawn from today’s…
It came from Detroit!
Ten years ago this week, I was sitting on a broken-down chair underneath a 5-foot papier-mâché skull — staring down a motley collection of punks, freaks, errant frat folks and friends who had converged on an otherwise unassuming brick house in Ann Arbor’s student ghetto. It was Halloween. I was drunk. And suddenly, I had…
Baseballs and bombs
Eric Mesko tells it like it was and is at Meadow Brook Art Gallery….
Behind 8 Mile
Close encounters with three of the film’s hometown crew members….
The real Slim Shady
You’ve only heard half the Eminem story — until now….
Kids ask the darndest things
Q: Dan, if you do your job and answer some fucking questions, all of your readers promise to run out and buy your book and make it a best seller. But if you keep boring us with the details of your boring book tour, none of us will buy your book! No more bullshit about…
Bringing race into the races
Butch Hollowell, who is running for secretary of state, has done something unique in this fall’s otherwise sorry-ass round of political campaigns in Michigan. He has boldly revealed that he, virtually alone among the self-righteous prigs running for office in this state, actually has a delightful sense of humor. Two weeks ago, Chuck Yob, an…
Concierge overkill
The Ramada Inn towers over the corner of Cass and Bagley, a grandiose, aging relic from Detroit’s days as the Paris of the Midwest. It may well be Detroit’s most haunted building. It’s a curious structure, infamous for many reasons. Built in 1927 as the Leland House, it was once a favored hangout of Jimmy…
Oct. 30-Nov. 5, 2002
30 WED • ART Nele Zirnite — A stark and simple test of the eye, Lithuanian-born graphic artist Nele Zirnite generates undemanding etchings. Tiny lines that create complex figures, these works conjure bareness and levity with human shapes that slip into organic-as-humus transformations like human trees, human birds and human rocks. Her unfathomable style stems…
Political zoology 101
Detroit voters will decide next week on the fate of the Belle Isle Zoo.
If they please
A deafening doorbell interrupts our interview. It is a homeless man, selling a hood ornament. Er, it’s not really a hood ornament, but rather an anomalous plastic winged figurine that looks more like it belongs on a bowling trophy or atop a Christmas tree than a car hood. John Szymanski, organist/vocalist of the Hentchmen, says…
Something Duke-ish
Plowshares Theatre gives us a nightlife taste of Detroit….
Publius threads
Publius.org aims to uphold the democratic process.
Garage sale
ACORN — a nonprofit housing group that helps low- and moderate-income people own homes — will be holding a free seminar on Saturday.
Craftwerk artifacts
This week’s abandoned “Arts & Crafts” house would bring tears to your eyes.
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
While driving down Woodward through Highland Park, most people are probably too busy gawking at hookers to take much notice of the historic neighborhoods just west of the main drag. Our abandoned house this week is in an area of Highland Park that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its proliferation of…
Granholm & arts tax are easy picks
Jennifer Granholm is clearly the superior candidate for governor. Southeast Michigan should flex its muscle for Granholm. Her opponent, Dick Posthumus, has campaigned like a punk. He is a denser, more naive version of John Engler, which means he’s a chucklehead and a rigid ideologue. Posthumus’ ideas are even more reactionary than Engler’s, if that’s…
The Truth About Charlie
What we have here is director Jonathan Demme, two degrees removed from Hitchcock through Truffaut, concocting a self-indulgent cinematic dessert that only film aficionados can completely appreciate, a gorgeous visual love letter whispering sweet Technicolor nothings to the masters of ’60s cinema.
8 Miles, 4 Thoughts
This is your movie, about your hometown, starring your pop icon. The makers of 8 Mile are showing a preview of the film as a courtesy to the scores of Detroit-area residents who played extras and various bit roles. Excitement is not an accurate enough term to describe the energy at the Detroit Institute of…
Some kinda wonderful
Director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) seems more afraid not to travel into the unexplored than to sit comfortably inside the standard. What with Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, and Anderson’s eye, ear and touch, every aspect of this visual song of vulnerability is saturated with emotion and momentum.
Auto Focus
In 1978, actor Bob Crane, amiable star of the ’60s TV sitcom "Hogan’s Heroes," was found bludgeoned to death in a motel room. Director Paul Schrader offers a visual corollary to Crane’s self-destructive sex addiction, one that becomes more “out of focus” as it proceeds — with Greg Kinnear.
Quitting
Dark and experimental, this is the true story of a young Chinese actor and his struggle with drug addiction. And while there’s not much new in the addiction angle, there’s much of interest in the film’s depiction of Western pop culture’s incursion into modern China.
Paid in Full
All of the things that usually happen in urban drug movies happen in this one (no surprises, no punches pulled, the requisite number of ’80s jokes), but Paid in Full remains enjoyable all the same — with Wood Harris and Mekhi Phifer.
jackass the movie
The epitome of asinine — the pure, undiluted essence of lowbrow humor. It’s moronic, highly disgusting and frequently shocking — and if you “get it,” painfully, outrageously funny. If you like the TV show, you’ll love the movie; if you hate the show, you won’t make it past the first 20 minutes.
Comedian
In a documentary assembled from videotaped slices of the lives of current stand-up comedians and featuring Jerry Seinfeld, you might expect a lot of laughs. But this film dishes out the fears of the clowns, overwhelming the chopped-up morsels of stand-up routines.
Below
What made the producers of Below think that they could combine two tired genres — submarine and horror — into a sum better than its parts? Unfortunately, Scooby and the gang fail to show up and rescue this unintentionally comic exercise from its own pathetic devices.
Ghost Ship
This watery scare flick’s best moments are its opening ones, which feature an excellent scene of mass murder in which dozens of people are halved by a wire cable slicing through their stunned bodies. This proves to be but a brief vacation from the dull fact of the movie’s very existence.
Smash! Pow! Bam!
Mega-investor Ron Perelman has all the traits of a comic book supervillain. He is massively wealthy and powerful. More to the point, he exudes enough vanity and overreach to make Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom seem like a couple of Girl Scouts. So it’s not surprising to see Perelman slugging it out with rival billionaire…
